Bee-Keeping for All - A Manual of Honey-Craft

BEE-KEEPING FOR ALL

EARLY CONSIDERATIONS IN

BEE-CRAFT

A BEE-HIVE AND ITS INHABITANTS

IN first taking up bee-keeping, there are a few simple facts about the natural-history of the honey-bee which the practical man will require to know.

A normal stock of bees in summer time consists of 40,000 or 50,000 workers who are really sexually undeveloped females, one queen or fully developed female who alone is capable of the reproduction of her species and is, in fact, the mother of the whole colony, and some hundreds of drones, or male bees. The workers carry on all the labour of the hive—the nectar-gathering, comb-building, care and feeding of the young larvæ, etc. The queen does nothing else but lay eggs; which she will do, in the height of the season, to the tune of 2,000 to 3,000 a day. The drone’s usefulness is confined mainly to the work of fertilisation of the young queens. It is possible also that his presence in fairly large numbers in the hive helps to keep up the temperature of the brood-nest at times when most of the workers are out foraging. But this is a debatable point. Normally, drones are present in the hive only from about mid-April to August. At the end of the honey-making season they are driven out of the hive by the workers, and then die off.

The duration of the life of the worker-bee varies from about six weeks in the summer to three or four months in the close season. The last batches of young bees raised in the autumn live in a semi-dormant condition throughout the winter, and persist long enough to raise the first batches born in the spring. The population of a hive is thus constantly changing. The queen, however, will live on from year to year if she be allowed. A queen-bee is fertilised once only in her lifetime by the male. This takes place at the beginning of her mature life, during what is called her mating flight. Thereafter, as far as is known, she remains permanently within the hive attending to her work of egg-production, except at swarming time, when she goes off with the emigrating party, a new queen taking her place in the old hive.

The eggs laid by a fertile mother-bee are of two kinds: the one which has been impregnated by the drone principle, producing the female of the species, the other which has been not so impregnated, resulting in males only. The queen-bee has the power, seemingly, of depositing either kind of egg at will, for the former is almost invariably laid in the small-celled worker-comb, while the latter is just as surely placed in the large-celled drone-comb only. The egg from which the undersized, sex-atrophied worker-bee is evolved is identical with that from which the large-bodied fully developed queen-bee issues. The resulting differences are entirely due to treatment, feeding, and environment. In each case, about three days after the egg is deposited, a tiny, white grub appears; but thereafter, in the case of the worker-bee and drone, the grub receives only a bare minimum of the partially digested and regurgitated food called bee-milk and this only for the early part of its existence; but, in the case of the queen-grub, this chyle-food is administered in abundance, and of specially rich quality throughout the whole period of its larval life. Moreover, the worker-grub is raised in very restricted quarters wherein free growth is impossible, while the queen-larva, in addition to receiving a lavish and specially rich diet, is matured in a cell much larger than is necessary for her utmost development.

In regard to the combs, which are suspended side by side from the roof of the hive with about a quarter-inch passageway between, the beginner need grasp only one fact at present. They are made by the worker-bees, during the first fortnight of their lives, of material derived entirely from their own bodies. The raw material from which beeswax is made is secreted within certain glandular recesses on the bee’s abdomen in the form of tiny, flat, glass-like scales. These scales are chewed up by the worker-bees and incorporated with the secretion from certain glands, the resulting substance being formed into comb. The glutinous matter, called by beekeepers Propolis, of which such quantities are used by the bees for stopping up crevices, etc., is also probably matter actually created by the bees themselves, although the general belief hitherto has been that it is gathered outside, like the nectar.

There are of course a great many other facts about the life of the honey-bee—an endless array of them, indeed—which the bee-keeper will gradually add to his store of knowledge; but the foregoing comprise all that is necessary for a start. We are now in a position to look into a modern bee-hive and note the chief points wherein it differs from the old straw-skep beloved of our forefathers.

Until the modern movable-comb hive was introduced, any scientific cultivation of bees worthy of the name was impossible. While the combs were fixed and the bees were free to build them how and wherever they willed, little or nothing could be done in the way of management, and the bee-keeper had to take, in the matter of honey, just what the bees chose to produce. But with the advent of the movable comb-frame, and the invention of artificial comb-foundation, all this was changed. These frames hang side by side in the brood-nest touching it only where the ends of the top-bars rest on the hive-sides, so that it is only at these two small points that the bees can fasten them down. And the bees are induced to build only within the frames by furnishing these frames with thin sheets of wax impressed on each side with a hexagonal pattern representing the cell bases. The results of this system are that we can secure straight, well-made combs of any size, and as many in number as we will: we can ensure them being composed throughout of worker-cells, and thus limit the drone population of a hive to its necessary minimum: the frames being readily removable, we can withdraw from the brood-nests those which are clogged with honey and substitute empty combs from other hives, which the queen will fill with eggs: we can strengthen backward stocks by giving them frames of brood taken from over-prosperous colonies: above all, we can enormously increase the honey-yield of our hives by furnishing their upper stories with these movable frames, which can be taken out at intervals, emptied of their honey by means of another famous modern invention—the centrifugal honey-extractor—and return the clean combs to the hives to be immediately filled again without putting the bees to the great expense in time and trouble of making fresh combs during the height of the honey-flow, just when time and bee-labour are most precious. By means of the movable comb, also we can control, and often prevent, swarming—hitherto the chief obstacle to large honey-yields.

FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BEE-CULTURE

THERE are certain cardinal principles upon which all successful bee-culture must rest. The first of these is the necessity for a good location. Bee-keeping will not succeed in itself unless sufficient nectar-yielding plants exist within a two mile radius of the locality.

It is useless to think of planting specially for bee-forage. Nothing less than half an acre will make any appreciable difference in the yield from the hives, and probably ten times this area would be needed, taking good seasons with bad.

If, therefore, your holding is not situated in the midst of extensive fruit-plantations or gardens, or near sheep-farms, or within reach of heather-moorlands, you will do well to leave bee-keeping, as a source of income, alone.

Given, however, a good location, a large average honey-harvest may be maintained by consistent observance of these three chief principles: (1) Possession only of a good, hardy, prolific strain of honey-bee; (2) retention of only strong stocks in the apiary; and (3) housing of these stocks in properly designed and constructed hives.

Blood is the vital, paramount thing in successful apiculture, as it is in all other stock-breeding enterprises. Bees produce a far greater quantity of honey when they are combined in very large communities. But neither quality of stock nor numerical strength will obtain their best results if the work of the colonies be hampered by faultily designed hives made of thin and poor material.

To make a real, payable proposition of bee-keeping, then, we must have the right bees, united in big colonies, in the right hives and stationed in the right districts. And, having secured that much, we must learn how to manage them in the right way.

ABOUT BEE-HIVES

I HAVE set it as a matter of first importance that the stocks should be housed in the right sort of hives. A good hive should consist of a brood-nest on a level with the entrance, where the queen lives and the young bees are raised, and an upper chamber where surplus honey is stored.

FIG. 1

Experienced bee-keepers are fairly well agreed that, for this country at least, a brood-nest containing ten comb-frames, each measuring 14 in. by 8 1/2 in., is large enough for all practical purposes.

The inside measurements of the upper chamber intended for the storage of honey are necessarily governed by the size of the brood-box on which the chamber rests.

It has been found most convenient to make this chamber in a series of separate stories, each capable of holding, in the case of section-honey, twenty-one 1-lb. section-frames and, where run-honey is being worked for, either eight or ten extracting-frames which are of the same length as the brood-frames, but ordinarily only 5 1/2 in. deep.

In their construction thus far, all modern hives are practically uniform. But they are not equally good.

Apart from the effects of good or bad management on these matters, we must now ask ourselves the question: How can the hive itself be made to contribute materially to the welfare of the bees and the outcome of their labours?

The beginner will do well to ponder this question carefully, as he may well find it to lie at the heart of the whole problem of how bee-keeping can be made to pay.

A bee-hive should do much more than contain its inhabitants and their various works. It must not only provide protection from cold and the onslaughts of weather, but it must also facilitate those works in every way that human ingenuity can devise.

In nearly all these essentials the modern hive, as obtainable commercially at present, is conspicuously lacking.

It must be realised by the novice in bee-craft that hives whose walls consist of a single thickness of wood are wholly unsuitable for the fickle British climate. It is impossible to make such hives cold-proof, although bees will contrive to winter in them. But if our bees are to do their best in the most economical way, we must provide them with hives which afford entire protection against outside cold, draught, and damp.

This no single-walled hive can ever do. For even if rain or wind are effectually excluded, the single wall to the brood-nest must always remain cold by reason of its contact with the outer air.

Warm walls to the chamber containing the cluster of bees and maturing larvæ, are a first necessity. A vapour is being continually given off by the bees clustered upon the combs. If the walls of the brood-box are cold, this vapour will precipitate its moisture upon them, instead of passing harmlessly away through the entrance, as it would do if the walls were insusceptible to outside temperature.

With thin, cold walls the dampness of the brood-nest reduces the temperature of the cluster, and the bees become restless. They endeavour by extra feeding to counteract the cold, and thus an excessive amount of stores is consumed.

FIG. 2. THE TICKNER EDWARDES HIVE

This in itself may give rise to dysentery and other troubles, but the unduly low temperature and waterlogged condition of the combs may set up fermentation in such of the honey as may not have been sufficiently ripe when sealed.

In this case, a dysenteric state is pretty sure to set in among the bees and the stock may even succumb altogether. I am constantly being asked to explain the cause of death in a colony which has died out mysteriously in the midst of plentiful stores and in a hive amply protected against the weather. In nearly every case I have been able to trace the disaster to the condition above described, due to the walls of the hive having been too thin.

By far the best system in hive-construction is to make the brood-nest walls hollow on all four sides, the space between the two skins containing nothing but confined air. This dead air is a more perfect heat-intercepting medium than any sort of packing, such as sawdust, which is liable to get damp and so rot the hive.

A brood-box designed on this plan is necessarily made in one piece in respect of its four sides and has the advantage of being strong without being unduly heavy. The floor-board is made detachable, the brood-nest merely standing upon it with side-plinths to prevent underdraught.

The upper part of the hive need only be single-walled, because the sides and ends of the honey-racks which go inside it themselves constitute a second inner casing.

The thorough ventilation of hives is an important matter at all seasons, and there is much that the bee-master can do to ensure the welfare of his bees in this respect. The question, however, is not so simple as it looks. You cannot provide for the ventilation of a bee-hive on the same systems as would be applied to a poultry-house.

It would appear to be quite easy to make a row of holes in the upper part or at the back of a brood-nest, so that there could be a natural escape of the heated foul air through these holes, and an equally natural and automatic inflow of fresh air through the hive entrance in front. But experience shows that the honey-bee will have nothing to do with such a device. Her system of ventilation is to have only one opening to her dwelling, which must serve for all purposes—the ingress and egress of air, as well as the coming and going of the busy population.

By this system air is drawn out of the one orifice, the hive entrance, at one or both of its sides, and fresh air passes in at its centre by a process of suction, the current of air thus induced probably making a complete circle, or perhaps double circle, of the interior of the hive, and the necessary movement being communicated to the air—as everyone knows—by the ranks of fanning bees which can